The Singles Jukebox

Shiny shiny young men make a dash for the US top 20…

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[5.38]

Michaelangelo Matos: Teen drinking is very bad… yo, I got a fake ID though!
[4]

Hazel Robinson: Look mate, I’m hungover right now and it’s not a metaphor I need. This would be a lot better if a) the needless singalong bit at the end was removed (unless it was made far less tuneless, a la “Self Esteem” by the Offspring) and b) the lead singer sounded like he was completely ruinated; hangovers, even metaphorical ones, are not joyful explosions, except possibly in a Jackson-Pollock-Redesigns-Yr-Bathroom sense.
[5]

Martin Skidmore: It has an exuberantly catchy chorus with some great backing vocals, sharp playing, and it’s generally cute and lively. I particularly like the shouted “Hey”s, but this is hard to resist generally. The kind of thing I often hate, but I really like this.
[8]

Alex Ostroff: Sufficiently high energy for my brain to dance past the emo straight to the chorus, which would be much improved were the lyrics actually “I’ll love you for breakfast.”
[7]

Martin Kavka: This has clichés, but they’re weird and incongruous ones — guitar riffs that sound like something from The Joshua Tree sped up to 78rpm, whispered “oh yeah!”s that seem to have been lifted from gay porn, and a last-minute key change typical of lame Europop. In other words, it’s rock for musical-theater nerds.
[7]

Andrew Unterberger: Don’t look now, but Boys Like Girls are building themselves a solid pop-punk resume. “The Great Escape” was fun but easily forgettable, but they followed that up with the super-underrated “Hero/Heroine,” and now this–a positively gigantic-sounding single that blends the panoramic production and ambition of Angels & Airwaves with the youthful energy and sugary sweetness of Metro Station. It’s already their biggest hit, and it’s only gonna get bigger. Get ready for greatness, Lloyd.
[7]

Chuck Eddy: Manages to slip from 7 (first 49 sinewy seconds, until the twerpy chorus kicks in) to 6 to 5 to 4 in just four minutes. An impressive mathematical feat, so I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Thirty seconds in: the Boys are love drunk on U2 guitar peals and hit-and-run metaphors. Fifty seconds in: the Boys Like The Killers. Two minutes in: a key change signifies the Boys’ continuing love drunkenness (are they still thinking about getting behind the wheel?). Imagine if they were lovestoned.
[2]

Doug Robertson: With a sound as uninspired as their name and working on the assumption that some dated vocal effects and a few “Oh Yeah!”s is an adequate substitute for actual ideas, this third rate reworking of “Somebody Told Me” is about as rewarding as a jail canteen loyalty card scheme.
[0]

John M. Cunningham: Coincidence or not? The chorus bears a melodic resemblance to that of the Killers’ “Somebody Told Me,” which in turn lyrically echoes Blur’s buoyant “Girls & Boys”. Not that those associations absolve the vexing heteronormativity of the band name, nor the fact that as polished pop-punk goes, this is proficient but not particularly special.
[5]

Hillary Brown: Missing a little of the extreme exhilaration that would buoy this tune up into the highest echelon of pop loveliness, but it’s still fairly charming, bouncy, etc. It’s just no “Do You Know?”
[7]

Anthony Easton: Liked it until the falsetto started, would have liked it better if it was done by teenage girls, but then I feel that way about most things done with guitars.
[3]

Jordan Sargent: A weird mall-punk song in that I think it gets worse from verse to chorus. The verses have an impressive classic rock propulsion to them, but the hook’s metaphor is pretty unforgivable, let alone the part where he brings up “rehab”.
[6]

Anthony Miccio: If they’re hung over, why does this sound like Christian skateboarders biting rapturously into Whoppers as they glide under a bright blue California sky filled with cell phone company logos? And that’s before the key change. Initially the audio equivalent of being gangbanged by Sprite bottles, the disconnect between the kitchen sink pop-rock euphoria and the snarky, miserable lyrics grabs me more with every listen — in the destructive element immerse, bro!
[8]

Iain Mew: The stupidity of the underlying song and the speed and zest with which it’s delivered are mostly finely balanced. Then, with a minute to go, they hit some kind of turbo button and power into a resounding victory for the latter.
[7]